The invention relates generally to the field of photography, and in particular to photo collections. More specifically, the invention relates to employing image recognition techniques for generating photocollages automatically.
Photographs, videos, and memorabilia collections are very commonly used to maintain memories and events that formed a part of a persons life. These collections serve to augment the human memory and enrich the process of sharing stories related to the memories. When organized, viewed and shared on a regular basis a collection of memory artifacts generates a large reward, enriching the lives of all involved. The nature of these collections is such that they grow steadily, event by event, year by year, and soon become large and difficult to manage. Collections of photos and memorabilia are considered one of the most important and valued possessions by most people. They are the first things that people think of when forced to flee their homes due to fire, flood or other natural disaster. These collections possess intrinsic, emotional value, even if they are never viewed, because the need to preserve a memory of life is strong and universal. Because of the relative importance of these memories to the persons involved, the prior art is replete with teachings that disclose organizational methods.
The most common manner of organizing these collections within the prior art is to place the photos, videos or memorabilia into either an album or a box. Common vinyl album pages provide the means to store and view between one and five standard sized photos per page. Creative people often spend hours carefully selecting and arranging photos, writing captions, clipping newspaper articles, and other memorabilia to create visual stories or scrapbooks. Once organized into groups or pages these photocollages greatly enhance a person""s ability to remember and share the story surrounding the depicted events. These simple organization tools allow the collections to be easily viewed and also serves to protect the artifacts themselves. There are numerous types of albums and boxes available in the market today, ranging from simple vinyl sleeves to boxes manufactured from specialized materials designed to preserve the artifacts. Album vendors include Pioneer Photo Albums, Design Vinyl and Cason-Talens. Box vendors include Exposures. None of these prior art disclosures provide a means by which a photocollage of these memorable events can be easily constructed by persons to who these event means so much.
As used herein photocollage refers to a single page having a plurality of images, such as a page in a photo album, or a composite image having a number of images relating to a single theme such as a vacation, wedding, birthday party or the like. The concept of photocollage as used herein also includes the concept of a bound photo album having a plurality of pages, one or more of which is a photocollage. Despite the fact that many people are engaged in collecting these memorable artifacts, few people have the free time available to invest on a regular basis to organize and maintain them. Before long, the amount of unorganized material becomes a significant psychological barrier to getting organized. Other barriers exist which prevent people from actively maintaining these memorabilia collections such as confidence in their process, access to the materials, or remembering the details about the event. Often, once people get started on this organizational task they find it rewarding and fun, but still a significant amount of work.
Many attempts have been made to provide tools for working with or organizing photo and memorabilia collections. Computer software programs such as Picture-It(trademark), by Microsoft, or Creative Photo Albums(trademark), by Dog Byte Development, allow people to work with digital versions of their photos and create digital versions of an album or print them on a home printer. Software products such as these require each photo or artifact exist in digital form before they can be used. Although these products increase the ability to change and enhance photos and scanned memorabilia they do not reduce the amount of work needed to organize collections or create visual stories. Other services such as Photo-Net(trademark) by PictureVision(trademark) will scan photographs in a high-quality format at the time of photo processing and provide a thumbnail image of the scanned images via the Internet. A customer, using these scanned images can create collections of photos which can be viewed on the Internet or have prints generated. Currently some of these services do not allow for the arrangement of several photos on a page and are limited to consumers who have a collection of digital images and a computer connected to the Internet and who are both computer and web literate.
It should be apparent from the foregoing discussion that there remains a need within the art for a method by which consumers can create photocollages and photo albums (or have them made for them) in a manner that is as simple as ordering prints.
The present invention addresses the need for an improved method of generating photo albums from consumer photographs that requires a minimum amount of effort but yields a high-quality product and is reasonably priced.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above. Briefly summarized, according to one aspect of the present invention, a system and method for producing a photocollage from a plurality of images, comprising the steps of: a) obtaining a digital record for each of the plurality of images, each of the digital records having a unique identifier and storing the digital records in a database; b) automatically sorting the digital records using at least one date type to categorize each of the digital records according at least one predetermined criteria; c) employing means responsive to the sorting step to compose a photocollage from the digital records. The system then associates each of the images with at least one of the categories followed by a sorting step that arranges the images according to the categories. The system then employs the categories to automatically construct the photocollage from the stored images by generating a plurality of pages of the stored images.
These and other aspects, objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be more clearly understood and appreciated from a review of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments and appended claims, and by reference to the accompanying drawings.
The present invention has the following advantages: Allows the user to have (1) an easy method for creating professional looking photocollages, (2) duplication of photocollages, and (3) keeping photocollage files for later use.